Andrey Sitnik, Evil Martians
How to Make a Popular Open Source Project
I am working at
15 Years Experience in Open Source
since 2004
5 Years Experience in Open Source Promoting
since 2013
Sharing Real Experience
Nano ID
Browserslist
PostCSS
Autoprefixer
3 M
50 M
80 M
30 M
Downloads per month
Chapter 1
Why you should create open source project?
Ты почему опенсорс не пишешь?
Часики-то тикают
Опенсорс надо писать пока молодой
Потом поздно будет
Что значит не хочешь?
Опенсорс все хотят
Дал Бог проект,
даст и PR
Halt and Catch Fire
“You must have OS project to find a job”
HR
“Success Formula”
Idea
GitHub
Popularity
Success
South Park, Go Fund Yourself episode
Open Source dream is a lie
Popular project ≠ many followers
Better ways to be popular
Articles
Talks
GitHub project ≠ good resume
1 month of work → few stars
vs
2 weeks → commit to Babel
Better ways to be popular
Create app
Fix docs in popular projects
Use beta version → fix bugs
App from slides.com/keziyahlewis/deck
The best reason: change the world
My reason for Autoprefixer: kill Compass
My reason for PostCSS: CSS tools diversity
Stylelint
Lost Grid
cssnano
RTLCSS
My reason for Size Limit: reduce JS lib size
Chapter 2
Success formula
False formula
Good idea → Popular project
False
My open source projects
Nano ID
Browserslist
PostCSS
Autoprefixer
The real list of my projects
52 non-popular and only 4 popular
Fail case 1: Size Limit
Size Limit 0.1
Article about it
a week to write the article
bundlesize was released before my article
Size Limit 0.1
Article about it
Size Limit lost
Fail case 2: Autoprefixer
grid-template-rows: auto auto
Fail case 2: Autoprefixer
grid-template-rows: auto auto
The real success formula
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Idea is not important
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Idea
Useless project can’t be promoted
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Chapter 3
Base axioms
Axiom 1: success formula
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
How we think people choose frameworks
Rational choose across all options
How we think people choose frameworks
Rational choose across all options
False
Axiom 2: How people choose frameworks
Irrational choose across popular options
How we think people read docs/tweets
How we think people read docs/tweets
False
Axiom 3: How people read docs/tweets
Chapter 4
Preparations
Success formula has Popularity on both sides
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
My main mistake: only Russian announce
My main mistake: nobody to mention
Advice 1: Create English Twitter account
Success formula is based on luck
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Advice 2: Be ready to try many times
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
Chapter 5
README.md
README.md is your main entry point
How people read docs
What users need?
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
Advice 3: Start from the reason to read it
First block of PostCSS
PostCSS is a tool for transforming styles with JS plugins.
These plugins can lint your CSS, support variables and mixins, transpile future CSS syntax, inline images, and more.
PostCSS is used by industry leaders including Wikipedia, Twitter, Alibaba, and JetBrains. The Autoprefixer PostCSS plugin is one of the most popular CSS processors.
Clear description
How it could be useful
Why it is important
It’s OK to spend a week on the first block
First block of Autoprefixer
PostCSS plugin to parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from Can I Use.
It is recommended by Google and used in Twitter and Alibaba.
Clear description
Why it is important
First block of Nano ID
A tiny, secure, URL-friendly, unique string ID generator for JS.
- Small. 141 bytes (minified and gzipped). No dependencies.
- Safe. It uses cryptographically strong random APIs and tests distribution of symbols.
- Fast. It’s 16% faster than UUID.
- Compact. It uses a larger alphabet than UUID (A-Za-z0-9_-).
Clear description
Difference from analogs
What should be in first block
- Clear description
- How the product is useful for users
- The difference from other products
Bad example of first sentence
Svelte is cybernetically enhanced web apps
Svelte is JS framework with unique compiler
which generate smaller JS files
Not clear
How to make good description
You in the bar with friends.
”So, I created …”
And then cut it 2-4 times
What do you think people read
What people actually read
Progressive JPEG
Advice 4: More illustration or code example
Advice 5: More lists and bolds
Important parts are highlighted
Advice 6: Use real proofs
Size Limit to prove “small”
Show benchmarks to prove “fast”
Show code to prove “better API”
Advice 7: Step-by-step starting guide
Your users
Be very specific
Help with choice
Separated sections for specific use cases ❤️
Test your starting guide on new project
npm init
…
everything works
Chapter 6
Slow growing
Wrong way to promote the project
Post 1 tweet
Got 4 retweets
Grows by small iterations
Federico Panzano
Each iteration contains
- Action (feature, tweet, article, etc)
- Feedback
- Fixing the project according to feedback
Next iteration bigger than previous one
- Bigger action
- More feedback
- More things to fix
1st iteration: explain the idea to friends
And find the way to describe the project
2nd iteration: convince colleagues to try it
Fix issues, DX,
and install docs
3rd iteration: post announce to the Twitter
And find the best way to describe projects
And tweet again each big feature
Good tweet
Code example or screenshot
Project description
New feature which was added
4th iteration: reddit and hacker
And fix compatibility issues
5th iteration: write article on your language
habr.com
6th iteration: write English article
dev.to
smashingmagazine.com
css-tricks.com
7th iteration: send PRs
Use previous success in next iterations
Don’t step making interations
Don’t spam: be regular
every 2 weeks or every month
Why you need to several tweets?
Why you need many iterations?
Feedback will help to fix it
How people choose
Irrational choose across popular options
How long they will support the project?
How many resources project has behind?
Regular tweets answer to these questions
Irrational choose across popular options
How long they will support the project?
How many resources project has behind?
Chapter 7
Working with community
You did everything right
Explain benefits in docs
Good step-by-step intructions
Regular tweets, articles, talks
And got issues from users
The circle of guilt
Many issues without answer
Blaming yourself for being bad maintaner
Depression and lack of productivity
Even more issues without answer
You don’t need to write code
15 min in the morning to answer on new issues
It’s OK to ask wait
Just an answer could make them your fans
Do something to avoid issues in future
Add warning
Stopped issues about using PostCSS for Sass sources
Add note to docs
Ask issue authors to change docs
How to deal with negative feedback?
There is no ideal answer
My best way is to start asking questions
Sometimes, people just need to talk
They can become your fan
after a talk
Chapter 8
Resume
Success formula
Project popularity =
Your popularity
Promotion
Benefits for users
Luck
+
+
+
How people choose
Irrational choose across popular options
How people read
README.md is critical
- Clear description
- How the product is useful for users
- The difference from other products
- Easy step-by-step instruction
Regular tweets, articles, talks
Thanks
DM me your open source